Black Fatigue Has Become a Racist Punchline Online
Lootings. Fights. Things thrown at customer service workers. Arguments in grocery stores. The trial of a 17-year-old alleged stabber. High schoolers dancing to rap music at graduation. A Black, female Iron Man.
To scroll on these kinds of videos online is to interact with different communities. But while the average internet user might see a viral fight, some are using clickbait videos as concrete proof of a popular phrase: Black fatigue. On social media sites like X (formerly Twitter), Reddit, and TikTok, the term is being used by conservative-leaning social media users to describe an exhaustion with both Black culture, and the prioritization of Black people. Social media users comment on violent videos or on clips of Black people speaking about white privilege, but often accompanied by thinly veiled racist rhetoric. “It’s when I can hear you 10 aisles away in Walmart with your fucking five kids,” said one TikTok creator. “When you have no home training and no idea how to act in public.” But before the term was a viral digital punchline, it was a concept used to describe how racism and microaggressions in the workplace can lead to physical symptoms in Black communities. Author Mary-Frances Winters, who popularized the term in 2020, tells Rolling Stone that while she’s not surprised the phrase has been co-opted, she’s choosing to not let it get to her — because that’s exactly what online trolls want.
“I have given my life to this work. When I was in high school, I was an activist. When I was in college, I was an activist,” says Winters, 74. “I’m not gonna live the rest of my life — however much of it I have left — letting Black fatigue impact who I am.”
A DEI consultant and researcher, Winters first encountered what she later described as Black fatigue while conducting diversity focus groups and interviews with Black employees at major companies. Group after group told her the same thing: microagressions, racism, and a lack of diversity at work had done more than make them upset. It was wearing them down physically and emotionally. That was when Winters began exploring research linking racism to poor physical outcomes. With that starting point in mind, she wrote her 2020 book Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body, and Spirit.
“In my book, Black fatigue is the mental and physical exhaustion that comes from repeated acts of discrimination over time,” Winters says. “It’s not just, ‘I’m tired because I had a long, busy day.’ No, it’s this repeated racism that wears you down, over and over again.”
While Winters’ book helped popularize the term in 2020, following the death of George Floyd and the national focus on the Black Lives Matters movement, it was only earlier this year that she realized the phrase was being turned on its head online. According to Know Your Meme, Black fatigue regained prevalence on social media after the stabbing arrest of 17-year-old Karmelo Anthony in Texas. The Black teen was arrested and indicted on murder charges in April for allegedly stabbing white teenager Austin Metcalf to death at a track and field meet. The racial components of the alleged murder made Anthony a heavy topic of discourse online and on conservative news channels, especially after his family started a GoFundMe to raise money for his legal defense. People used Black fatigue to describe being frustrated with supporters of Anthony, then Black violence in general, and finally, the entire Black community.
Zari Taylor, a faculty fellow and digital culture expert at New York University, tells Rolling Stone that the reframing of social justice or anti-racism is a tried-and-true tactic on social media, especially for right-leaning pundits. Many phrases used in social justice are first mocked, and then transformed to mean something else entirely. It’s a way of using a phrase’s popularity to further an alternative agenda. “Conservatives tend to do a lot of co-opting of Black politics, especially in the digital space. So Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, woke versus woke, Black fatigue, black fatigue,” she says. “It’s the same thing. Once those words reach a certain level of mainstream [recognition] within digital culture, people like to co-opt them for their own purposes.”
Taylor points to the ongoing wave of anti-DEI and social justice movements in national politics as one reason why people might feel more emboldened to say more overtly racist things on social media. President Donald Trump and Republican leadership have blamed everything from passenger jet crashes to bridge collapses on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. And Elon Musk’s purchase of X has transformed the social media site from a functioning tool to an echo chamber of conspiracy theories, anti-LGBT rhetoric, and outright racist language. It makes sense that the new definition of Black fatigue has continued to proliferate on the app — it’s right at home.
When Winters first realized how the phrase was being reimagined online, she was initially “devastated,” she tells Rolling Stone. But she says after looking into many of the accounts and groups who were using it to defend racist takes and punchlines, she decided that it wasn’t going to make her stop advocating for the Black community, and solutions to Black fatigue as she defines it.
“People who are in these extremes are not open to a conversation. I’m choosing not to let it impact me personally, emotionally,” Winters says. “I’m not going to get involved in whatever delusions, disinformation, or pain that causes people to be racist. I don’t know what they’re dealing with. But I know what my truth is. And I’m sticking to it.”
